It is Country knowing I belong regardless of my skin.
And the inexplicable sense of rightness I have
when I step off that plane from journeys far
and smell the air that is Australia,
and walk the very earth that is me.

jpm

Thank you to all of you who have followed me on my 50 words travels over the last year, for your encouragement and enthusiasm. I hope you have had some laughs, wondered a little, and maybe had some tears as well, remembering your own journeys through the lens of my words. I feel that by recording this little autobiography, I am all ready for Chapter 2. How exciting to look forward to adventures new and places unknown. I can’t wait.

The official certificate says our place of marriage was
Latitude 57°02’27N, Longitude 5°43’52W.
Simple numbers telling the story of a rugged Knoydart hillside,
overlooking Skye,
twixt Heaven and Hell,
surrounded with joy.
On a late autumn morning, colours saturated from weeks of rain.
And a shaft of startling sunlight pierced the clouds.

jpm

The Knoydart Peninsula juts out into the sea between Loch Hourn (meaning hell) to the north, and Loch Nevis (heaven) to the south.

In Copenhagen, homely Rosenberg Castle sits modestly in the King’s Gardens.
Surprising then, the magnificence of the three silver lions guarding the Thrones.
Staring down tourists through all-seeing eyes, challenging still across the Ages.
And in the Harbour, the Little Mermaid sits modestly, too, and waits for her Prince.

There’s an uneasy gloom in the late autumn afternoon.
My solitary footsteps clatter on cement paths between rows of silent, brooding barracks.
I throw the power switch, step inside
and the lights clack on like dominoes falling.
Auschwitz deserted but for me and the tears of millions of mortal souls.

My god it’s cold out here.
Seeping, insidious, creeping cold.
Stealing up from the ground underneath my tent, pitched in the lee of Offa’s Dyke –
Idiot I am to have forgotten my camp mat in the middle of winter.
Thermals irrelevant: might as well be naked.How long till dawn?

The train, along with the entire country, grinds to a halt.
For three days.
Goat innards, strung out to dry with the washing,
mark the start of Eid
in baking El Jem.
Dusty streets are strangely silent
as families break fast together
beneath the ancient gaze of Rome’s crumbling colosseum.